WSJ Reporter Freed in Massive US-Russia Prisoner Swap

(AP) – The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.

Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the U.S. government considered baseless.

The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The sprawling deal, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries.

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.